


What you've always known

by imperfectcircle



Series: Stories by theme: Humour [15]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Failboats In Love, Other, Post-Apocalypse, but to be fair things are hard, everyone is bad at things, very much influenced by TV characterisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 04:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20108971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle/pseuds/imperfectcircle
Summary: Aziraphale beamed at him. "I just thought, well, I never really do new things, do I? And there you are, doing new things all the time. It seemed rather jolly."





	What you've always known

**Author's Note:**

  * For [such_heights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/gifts).

> For such_heights <3
> 
> Beta by such_heights. All mistakes, errors, and poor choices are mine.

Angels are by design creatures of habit. You don't want Your divine attendants wandering off to try new things when there are celestial harmonies to be harmonised and divine glories to be glorified. That's what humans are for. 

But sometimes 6000 years of habit is nothing more than a pile of dusty papers. And sometimes, a single change is a spark. 

#

"What. Has happened. To your _hair_?"

"Oh, this?" Aziraphale twirled to show himself off to best effect. "Do you like it?"

Crowley found himself at an unexpected impasse. If someone had asked him yesterday what he would give to see Aziraphale sporting a raven black mullet with bright copper highlights, he would have laughed himself sick and then named a very high price. A week of listening to Hastur whine about the rise of this newfangled gramophone business. Four days of doing all the angel's blessings, yes, even the babies. But faced with the horrifying reality in front of him, he didn't actually like it. 

"Why?" he managed. 

Aziraphale beamed at him. "I just thought, well, I never really do new things, do I? And there you are, doing new things all the time. It seemed rather jolly."

Aziraphale continued to beam at him. It was exactly as unsettling as you'd expect. 

"Rather jolly?" Crowley repeated, enunciating the words as if speaking through a mouthful of toffee. 

In fairness to Crowley, a substantial part of his attention was not on the conversation itself, but instead on how to magic away the bunch of flowers he had brought to their lunch without Aziraphale noticing. Crowley, rarely given to introspection, had recently had reason to take stock of the last 6000 years' worth of choices. He'd been a little alarmed to find just how heavily those concerning Aziraphale featured both in the "yes, excellent, fine work" column and the "on balance, might not do again" column. The flowers had been part of a still broadly formless plan to do something about it, at least until Aziraphale had showed up signalling in large black and copper letters that everything was Not Okay. 

"Yes, rather jolly," Aziraphale said firmly. There was something slightly wild around his eyes, a certain fixed cheer that had been welded into place. 

"Well, good," Crowley replied, most of his attention still on trying to work out whether setting a bunch of roses on fire counted as inconspicuous. 

"Good." Aziraphale made the small _humph_ of someone who has conclusively won an argument. 

Fire probably wasn't subtle, Crowley decided, letting the angelic _humph_ go for now. Instead, he simply sent the flowers Away, a simple trick that -- he would have been surprised, but not disappointed, to learn -- was about to make the Royal Ballet's performance Swan Lake matinee decidedly more floral. 

Under the black and copper mullet, Aziraphale was looking a little worn. He had the appearance of a being whose fundamental understanding of the universe had been shaken, who was now trying to put a brave face -- and even braver hair -- on the whole thing. 

Well. Crowley got himself back on track. "Sit down, angel," he said, pushing out Aziraphale's chair with his foot. "I hear they have a cheeky little 1959 Rivesaltes here I've been just _dying_ to try."

Beneath them, in the modestly appointed wine cellar of a small but elegant restaurant somewhere in Soho, a middling Pinot Grigio of no particularly interesting vintage found itself becoming rather older, rather better quality, and really rather cheeky. 

Aziraphale sat down and primped his hair gently. "I mean, really, you do make a fuss." 

And that might have been the end of it. Aziraphale seemed happy, and Crowley was used to worse from his own former colleagues. If you thought about it, he told himself, a bad mullet was no worse than keeping a live newt on your head. You'd get used to it. You could get used to anything after a while. 

The next day, however, Aziraphale showed up to the Ritz in bright yellow cowboy boots. 

It is important to understand quite how yellow these cowboy boots were. Yellow is not, as a rule, a quiet colour. There are yellows that chatter happily to themselves -- the primroses and butter yellows of the world, whose destiny is to feature as splashes of colour in newly renovated upper middle class kitchens that have the most _delightful_ little nook for a wine rack, darling, have you seen? There are yellows that shout -- the neons and canary yellows, who emblazon football kits and hi-vis jackets, warning all who come near that health and indeed safety may be at risk. And then there was this yellow. This yellow screamed. 

"Do you like them?" Aziraphale said, pulling up one trouser leg to display how truly calf-high the yellow went. "I thought they were rather neat."

Something latent in Crowley's brain made itself known, the mental equivalent of a long-forgotten Geiger counter whose batteries had not yet quite given out. He had the nagging sensation he should be whispering in the angel's ear about bright red Porsches and attractive young people half his age (a youthful and spritely 3000). 

He knew what this was. He'd spent years crafting it. Even got a low level commendation from Hell for it. 

Bugger. This was a mid-life crisis. 

"Look," he said when Aziraphale had sat down and they'd both ordered some rather good sushi that their waiter was surprised to find on the menu. "Is this about --" He tried to think of a sensitive way to phrase it. The boots were very yellow. "-- the whole 'heaven tried to kill you' thing?"

The use of air quotes did not soften the blow as much as Crowley had intended. Aziraphale's face did something small and sad that Crowley didn't like at all. 

"It's not so bad," he offered. "It can be quite fun, once the internal screaming stops." 

Aziraphale did his best to give Crowley a bemused look. The boots didn't help. Nor did the hair. "What? No!" He let out a small and wholly unconvincing laugh, as if to underline his lie. 

Oh. Well. That was that, then. Heaven had rejected Aziraphale, and in turn, Aziraphale was rejecting taste. 

Crowley had never been very good at being comforting, but for Aziraphale he tried. 

"I'm sure they didn't mean it."

Aziraphale just looked at him. 

"No," Crowley said, "of course they meant it. But I'm sure they appreciated all the good works you've done up here before the whole --" He made a lazy gesture with his fork. "Well. That. You were always blessing this and saving that and inducing kindness and so on. Thwarting. You did a lot of thwarting. They think that's great, up there." 

Aziraphale still had the black and copper mullet from yesterday. And the yellow boots. And now, with a barely-there wave of his hand, he had bright purple sunglasses. 

"...!" Crowley said intelligently. The worst part of it was, he still wanted nothing more than to be around the angel. All the poor hair and worse accessories in the world couldn't stop Aziraphale from being, quite frankly, the best thing in Crowley's universe. Realisations like this were exactly the reason he didn't like introspection. 

"I think I look rather dashing," Aziraphale said brightly, as if the last couple of minutes hadn't happened. "Don't you?"

Crowley considered his options. "Yes," he settled on. "Very dashing, angel. The glasses really set off your hair." 

Aziraphale gave him a tiny, contented nod and went back to his sushi. 

Crowley, a scheming and cunning demon whose patience and determination could outlast empires, gave him a whole three minutes of silent sushi enjoyment before saying, "If you really wanted to stick it to them, you could do worse than spending more time with me."

Aziraphale dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin. "We've had lunch together every day this week. And last week. Normally by now you'd be haring off to do some tempting up in Newcastle and I wouldn't see you for a month." 

Crowley gave a casual shrug and made a nonchalant noise that meant, _I could go to Newcastle. Nothing stopping me. I love Newcastle. Full of castles. And news. Yes._

"Oh, not that I'm complaining," Aziraphale reassured him -- a surprising reaction, given Crowley's own stoic and uncaring response to the charge. "I find I rather like it." He gave Crowley a small, happy smile, like Crowley was an unexpected extra biscuit he'd found by his cocoa. 

Crowley did not smile back, but he did let his stoic exterior soften slightly. It was a kindness to the angel, really. 

"I suppose we could always go for a walk after lunch?" Aziraphale offered. "I've been meaning to 'break in' these boots." 

The somewhat confused Clarks employee who had sold Azriaphale the boots -- which had, up until that point, been a pair of very sensible flat black ladies' shoes, perfect for the office -- had been very emphatic about breaking the boots in. Apparently if you didn't break them in, you might find yourself with blisters _or worse_. Aziraphale, who had never in 6000 years put on a pair of shoes that didn't immediately mould themselves to his foot shape, had been very impressed. 

And, in truth, _that_ might have been the end of it, too. Crowley had just about got over being kicked out of heaven, after all, and Aziraphale was made of sterner stuff. Give it a couple of hundred years and he'd be right as rain. By 2500 or so Crowley could even start thinking about bringing him flowers again. A century here or there was meaningless to a being such as him, composed as he was of the ineffable firmament spoken into existence before time itself. 

The next day, however, Aziraphale strolled into St James' Park with a dog. 

Well, sort of. 

Dogs are one of humanity's better decisions. Where God create wolves, humanity thought, you know what would make this deadly predator better? Loyalty, good humour, and an abundance of affection. And maybe a waggy tail. Yes. Let's give it one of those. Aw, what a good boy. Who's a good boy? It's you. Yes, yes, it's you. 

Hellhounds, on the other hand, can be somewhat unpleasant. 

"Angel," Crowley said slowly, keeping a cool few feet between himself and the embodiment of satanic wrath currently licking its own privates with gusto. "Why do you-- Are you aware-- That's-- No. Bad. Very very bad." 

"That's not a very nice thing to say about Mr Puddings," said Aziraphale, who was wearing a black and copper mullet, yellow cowboy boots, purple sunglasses, a neon green bowtie with blue LEDs embedded along its edges, a leather biker jacket with spikes, and his normal beige waistcoat and trousers. "He's a very good boy, aren't you Mr Puddings? Aren't you?"

Mr Puddings looked up from his thorough investigation of his own unmentionables to give Aziraphale the most malevolent stare seen outside two commuters going for the last seat on the Central Line. He sniffed once, belched a tiny flame, and then went back to his primary purpose in life. 

"Isn't he sweet?" Aziraphale said, miracling away the scorch marks on his left trouser leg with a wave of his fingers. "He appeared in a puff of sulphur this morning and I thought I’d keep him. I'm not sure he's quite ready for the shop yet, but I was thinking of closing it up for a few weeks, maybe going on holiday. I haven't been to Spain since, oh, when was it?" 

"1904," Crowley said. "You had a craving for tapas. Aziraphale, what are you doing? That's a hellhound. This --" He gestured at Aziraphale's outfit. "-- is an abomination. You don't want to go to Spain, you barely ever want to leave London. Why are you doing this to yourself?"

He'd expected Aziraphale to change the subject again, or pretend confusion, or make up something about how lovely Spain is at this time of year. 

But, just as he'd been doing since that first meeting in the first garden, Aziraphale surprised him: 

"It doesn't matter," the angel said in tones of great calmness. "Don't you see? None of it matters any more. You and I swapped forms. I took a bath in front of demons. You went back to heaven. And nothing happened. No one found us out. No one's watching. It's all absolutely fine. And so if I want to wear something new, or make a new friend, or go somewhere different, who's to stop me? What could possibly happen that hasn't already happened? What can possibly--"

Crowley kissed him. It took them both by surprise. 

Demons don't kiss, as a rule. Oh, they do sexy things with their mouths that make humans write bad poetry, but they don't _kiss_, not often, not properly. They don't open themselves up to be seen and felt and known through the divine channel that lies dormant inside them, the blaze of light and glory that is to a human soul as a supernova is to a match. And if they do kiss, which they don't, as a rule, they certainly don't kiss angels. 

"Oh," Aziraphale said when Crowley pulled away. "Well. That was certainly. Oh." 

_Oh,_ Crowley thought to himself. Well, that explained the flowers. "If you want to do something foolish and ill-advised to shout in the face of an uncaring eternity, I'm right here. It seems that I have been for-- for a while."

"Um," Aziraphale said, who had, it was important to note, kissed back. "This is all terribly sudden."

It wasn't, Crowley wanted to say. Humanity was sudden. You thought you knew what they were doing and then you turned round one day to find out they'd invented ketchup or harpsichords or the Industrial Revolution. He and Aziraphale were the glacial ones, moving so slowly they might as well be standing still. It was only that he hadn't realised, right up until the point where he had. 

He didn't say that. Instead, he went with, "Think about it?"

Aziraphale's smile was sad but honest. "I suspect I'll be doing little else."

At their feet, Mr Puddings let out another flaming belch. 

The next day Crowley, an expert tactician who knew no fear, ran away to Newcastle. 

It had one castle and very little news. He wasn't in the mood to tempt anyone, so he took himself for a walk along the River Tyne, kicking discarded beer bottles and cans into bins to spite Pollution. 

The thing was, Aziraphale had kissed back. He'd opened himself up to Crowley to be known, to let Crowley in through the most intimate of routes. Crowley had _felt_ the love pouring out of him, the solid core of goodness -- of love and kindness and fussiness and books and cocoa and hope and faith -- that yearned for a connection with Crowley just as much as Crowley did in return. 

You couldn't lie through a kiss. And even if you could, Aziraphale wouldn't, not with Crowley, not after everything. 

"Oh," Aziraphale said, standing up from a bench that hadn't been there thirty second ago. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Argh," said Crowley. 

"I thought I'd keep the neckpiece," Aziraphale continued. He was otherwise back in beige, though the black and copper mullet was still very much present, a perfect framing for the neon green bowtie. "Sit down."

Crowley sat. 

"I don't know how you do it," Aziraphale said. "All that change, all the time. A new hairstyle every decade. Doesn't it get exhausting?"

Crowley did him the service of thinking about it for a moment before replying. "Not as exhausting as standing still."

"Hm. I suspect you have a point. I did like the boots." 

They sat together for a moment, staring out at the River Tyne in silent contemplation of the yellowest boots in all of creation. 

"What happened to the hellhound?" Crowley asked after a while. 

"Mr Puddings? He fashioned a sigil out of Pedigree Chum and opened a portal to another world. Very resourceful, that dog." 

The city continued around them. Two children ran past, laughing as they raced to the next lamppost. 

"Can we try that again?" Aziraphale asked at last. "What you suggested yesterday? Not as a distraction or a way to stick it to heaven, but for us. For you and me."

Crowley weighed up some cool and effortlessly witty responses, found them all lacking, and instead reached out to take the angel's hand.

Aziraphale interlaced their fingers. "It was a good idea. I was just surprised."

"Me too," Crowley admitted. 

"Yes," Aziraphale said slowly. "I rather thought so. Well. I'm here, and you're here, and perhaps it is time for a change, after all."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos, etc all very welcome! 
> 
> Title is from Little Mix's Change Your Life: 
> 
> Change, change your life, take it all  
You're gonna use it to become what you've always known
> 
> Come say hi on twitter - I'm [@krfabian](https://twitter.com/krfabian), where I tweet about all manner of nerd stuff (and my original fiction).


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